I'm a single mom with two great kids living near Dallas, Texas. This is my life; day to day things that are probably only important to me. This is my record of my ups, my downs and the road that I've taken along the way. For whatever reason YOU'RE here, I hope you find something you can enjoy and/or relate to.
God bless.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Let's Meet Over At Shawn's

I was reading some of my favorite blogs, and Shawn (Better Days Coming) posted an article that raised a good, thought provoking question. I hope you'll visit here and share what you think. It's a question about whether one's school system has a right to have any form of control on a student while he isn't in school. My thoughts on it are on his comment section.

9 Comments:

That's a huge issue to discuss. It's scary because when my neice gets to be that age, I'm going to be one nervous aunt. I think a lot has to do with their 'chatting' as well as their little 'myspace' websites. They just give out way too much info.

I have a 14 yr old niece.. and I went over her Xanga site with her.. and she has EVERYTHING! on it. I said.. okay sweets.. if its just your friends reading it like you think.. no need to list your school name.. they already know it, right? And seriously.. take down your birthdate and your class schedule. It scares me.. After reading his blog, I have to say I still think its a parental issue. Its time we wake up and realize kids do not raise themselves. People need to get up off their asses, turn their TV's off and really find out what their kids are up to. Its a sad time when we expect schools to raise our kids 100%.

Haven't read the article yet, but my first thought after reading your post is, "Why the hell should the school have any form of control over the student outside of the acedemic campus?" That's just scary on a whole new level.

mg ~ I agree, however, seeing so many kids who don't have parents monitoring them outside of the school and thus putting the kids in so many dangerous situations, I'm almost glad that the school is opting to pick up the 'parental slack'. I know, I know...but if not them, then who??

This is a huge contraversy. With my recent events on my own blog I feel commpelled to comment. I strongly disagree with young kids even having a blog. I have been to Myspace and Xanga and I'm truely amazed at the things I read and see that these young kids are writing about. You can damn well believe their parents are totaly unaware of it too. I understand the "school" wanting to look out for these kids, but they should not be able to "dictate" to them what they can and can not do outside of school and certainly not with school equipment!!! I agree with you Kathi about the sports team members and that is only because they "represent" the school in a way. No I sound like a person with double standards and I hate that!! Lazy parents make me angry. I would not care if my child got angry enough to not speak to me, but if I had a child in school with computer access, I would be right there monitoring everything they did on it. (I would like to think that possible). Life is too tough for working parents anymore but you have to know where your kids are and what they are up too...IT'S THEIR JOB!!!!!!!! Parents rely on teachers for doing more than they are paid for. Being a fulltime parent comes first in my book and that means regulating what your child does and sees on a computer. This isn't rocket science..parenting is common sense. What happened to that?

sorry....went on a tangent but this hits a nerve with me in many ways.

They do have equipment that parents can utilize (if two parents are both busy working)---it's a 'guardian' to watch every single move that your kid is doing.... (IF the parents care at all.)

My friend has this device, and when she comes home from work, she checks every little sentence to every little "LOL" that the girl types out. She can print out the whole entire instant message conversation as well as see every site that her daughter goes on....

The trick?

She tells her daughter that she has it. She shows her print outs...so her daughter refrains from doing anything sneaky, cause now she knows.

Some parents don't give a rat's @ss about what their kids do. Some parents are neglectful--let's keep that in mind.

Personally, I think the school has NO right to come into our homes, we just need to be a little more responsible.

It's almost as bad as how far the government will go with security cameras everywhere. Some feel it's an infringement of our privacy, and others (like me) feel safe with many cameras around... BUT----it MAY get to the point, where they want to moniter your house.

Which comes to my next topic.

Are you sick of me yet??? I'll be done soon........

Satellites... "WHAT?"

You can now go online, to this website and type in ANYONE'S address, and this satellite will bring a pretty clear view of the picture of the house, what cars are in the driveway, as well as who is standing outside from a 'bird's eye view'. Thinking about tanning topless? Don't.

dear, sweet, crippled deb ~ LOl, sorry, had to do it. I agree, that the school shouldn't, and the parents should monitor and be responsible for kids outside of the school. But I'd rather err on the side of protecting the kid. I'm like your friend. I know every single thing my kids do online. There was a problem (a right of passage some might say) once with my oldest son. We discussed it, understanding since we've all been there, and we handled it without anyone feeling degraded, but also with them (him) knowing that there isn't anything he can do on the computer that we (as parents) won't be privy to. But, let's face it, we're a rare breed. I see the kids daily that don't have any kind of restrictions. All I'm saying is that I'm glad the kids have the stability of someone (school, childrens services, whatever) being there to protect them from the creep on every corner (cyber corner or the house next door).